Please join Joseph Lease, a member of CCA's MFA Writing faculty, for a reading from his recently published, FIRE SEASON (Chax Press, 2023).

Lease's critically acclaimed books of poetry include The Body Ghost (Coffee House Press, 2018), Testify (Coffee House Press, 2011), and Broken World (Coffee House Press, 2007).

His poems "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)" and "Send My Roots Rain" were anthologized in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology.

"'Broken World' (For James Assatly)" was also anthologized in The Best American Poetry (Robert Creeley, guest editor).

Lease's poem “Free Again (Why don’t people)” was published in The New York Times.

Lease’s poetry readings are collected at PennSound, The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, KQED (NPR), The Scottish Poetry Library, The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, and elsewhere. He has received The Academy of American Poets Prize and numerous grants and awards in poetry and poetics from Columbia University, Brown University, Harvard University, and California College of the Arts. He is a member of the advisory board of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.